It seems significant to me. There are a lot of users on HN whose default move is to criticize whatever story just made the main page. Maybe that's not the best default position.
Paul Graham also mentioned somewhere that he's been collecting examples of "middlebrow dismissal" as a common kind of default response, in an attempt to understand/combat the phenomenon.
Like a commenter upthread mentioned, I think it's a combination of that and people upvoting names they recognize or that the community knows as/sees as "voices of" the community. They just take their word for it given past posts, rather than having it occur to them that maybe this topic isn't actually their forte. Additionally, someone taking the time to write out rebuttals just to be downvoted and "told off" with pointless and degrading one-sentence rebuttals is pretty pathetic.
My interpretation is that a lot of users are willing to cast a judgement with only a small percentage of the information available. This is why so many opinions on this topic, in hindsight look, shall we say, awkward ... to say the least.
The real value, for me in HN, is on topics where real discussions take place and other users are able to produce more information on topics, not so much where highly rated, articulate power users grace us with their opinions.
